Alexander Stepanovich Popov

Alexander Stepanovich Popov (Russian: Александр Степанович Попов, scientific transliteration Aleksandr Popov Stepanovic; * 4 Märzjul / March 16 1859greg in Turjinskije Rudniki, .. .. † December 31 1905jul / January 13 1906greg in Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian physicist and pioneer of radio technology.

Life

As the son of a clergyman Popov studied at the Theological Seminary in Perm. In 1882 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at St. Petersburg University. From the late 1880s Popov began his research on electromagnetic waves. On May 7, 1895, he described at a meeting of the Russian Society of Physics and Chemistry in Petersburg his experiments on the reception of electrical oscillations at distances and led for the first time in the world for such a receiver before, where he used a coherer. May 7th was declared 50 years later in the Soviet Union as the "Day of Radio". In 1901 Popov headed the chair of physics at the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute, in 1905, he became director of the Institute.

In January 1896 Popov published in the Journal of the Russian Society of Physics and Chemistry an article titled "Device for the detection and registration of electric oscillations ," in which he gave the scheme and a detailed description of the world's first radio receiver. A successful implementation of the device showed that it could actually absorb electromagnetic waves from the atmosphere. On 24 March 1896, scientists demonstrated the wireless transmission of signals over a distance of 250 meters.

In June 1896 the Italian Guglielmo Marconi patented in England an invention which repeated the scheme of the previously published in the publication Popov device. This action prompted the Russian scientists to a number of observations in the Russian and international press, in which he defended his right to priority. Although he was honored at the Paris Electrotechnical Congress in 1900, but was still in the public consciousness Marconi for his patent as the inventor of radio. Later, the East-West conflict was to ignore the Russian inventor in the west.

In the summer of 1897 Popov increased the transmission path. With funding from the Navy Ministry new devices were produced and reached a communication range of five kilometers. The first Russian work on the radio technology, which initially had mainly a military significance were conducted in secret. The property and the discovery of the reflection of radio waves on objects (especially of ships ) provided the basis for subsequent radar technology.

In the years 1898 and 1899 Popov conducted the experiments on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, and developed a method for converting the received radio waves into sound signals (before they could be recorded only on paper). In 1900, the communication range already was 112 kilometers.

Alexander Popov was buried in the cemetery Wolkowo.